David on Formosa

This article by Bill Stimson, a writer living in Taiwan, is about discovering beauty in the mundane and valuing what we have. It offers many insights into Taiwanese attitudes to the environment.

One of the greatest problems facing the modern world today, not just Taiwan, is the environmental crisis. It is rooted in dualistic thinking where the environment is perceived as something external and removed from our everyday life. People will go to great efforts to try and preserve a rainforest on the other side of the world yet attach no value to the wild things that survive in their own backyard.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Taiwan. Taiwan’s high mountains remain as a last vestige and stronghold of wilderness on an otherwise over-industrialised and urbanised island. What must have once been magnificent wild rivers are now regarded as mere drains and floodways.

It is amazing how quickly life in the rice fields has disappeared from the Taiwanese memory as modernity has swept aside all before it and created a sea of concrete and pollution. Ask around and you will find many areas in the outer suburbs of Taipei where still being farmed less than 20 years ago.

Bill’s article serves as a cry for us not to forget what we have: the wild nature that still clings to life in our own backyards.